4 things that would make CoH2 instantly better

The spectacle of a close game is also enthralling for the stream audiences.
I remember (I believe it was the second TFN beta cast) the 2v2 between Ami on one side and some other randoms coming down to literally a single VP, the winning side having sat on that single VP while draining 60 or so points from the opposition..

That's the problem- literally the only thing the game has going for it in the 'epic game' department is long, VP close games involving a lot of tanks. There's no epic MG micro to look for because it switches targets automatically, there's no awesome light vehicle stuff because LV's get owned by ATGs due to the removal of target tables, and so on.

While it is indeed easy to get vet (just retreat in time) and the vet is boring stats wise, saying that it is of "little significance" is pretty out there considering that most wher units get 1.78x damage increase at vet 3.

Actually, even though that does sound like a lot in one go, compare that to the combined veterance of a rifleman at vet 3:
- 1.65 x accuracy
- 1.5 x damage
- 0.8 x rec'd accuracy
- 0.75 x rec'd suppression
- 0.85 x rec'd damage

Just the damage and accuracy buffs alone are superior to a flat 1.78x damage increase.

The loss of SY upgrades and global veterancy is indeed sad- all you can do is grow your army, vetting them up happens anyway and is generally of little significance, due a) because it takes no skill to get high levels of vet anymore and b) the vet itself isn't very interesting.

The philosophy behind vet in this game seems to be close to what it was in DoW 2. Instead of making vet hard to attain and something that only a few squads that were always in the thick of it got, drastically improving their combat capabilities, you make it easy to attain and the bonuses smaller. What this does is make everything on the field vet up together. This does endorse good squad preservation though since if you lose a conscript or gren squad in the late game, they'll come back with zero vet where every other unit on the field is around 2-3 vet. So even if you lose your entire army, you cant replace them with ease since your opponents army will be vetted up.

In theory it promotes squad preservation when it's well balanced (the strength of the bonuses vs the ease of attaining them) but as of now it seems like the vet bonuses are too small to promote preservation. I also favor the old system from CoH far over this one, since it gives more identity to the squads and make units stand out more.

And further killing any desire for preservation is the upkeep system, which makes it practically more economical to lose your squads and rebuild them than to reinforce them.

It's a wonderful cycle!

The philosophy behind vet in this game seems to be close to what it was in DoW 2. Instead of making vet hard to attain and something that only a few squads that were always in the thick of it got, drastically improving their combat capabilities, you make it easy to attain and the bonuses smaller.

The bonuses aren't smaller though, they just aren't noticeable on Grens/Scripts because they are so weak it is a joke. All their rifles do is crit fairly often, but they do almost zero consistent dps like rifles and volks did. Run up behind a MG with a scripts and prepare to be there for a while, unless you get some criticals its going to take you about 10-12 seconds to do the same job a rifle squad could do in about 4 secs.

Even with ppsh upgrade Scripts still do next to no damage, the only reason they are viable is because almost everyone is terrible at countering hit the dirt.

I've found that a problem as well. I've been chasing MGs with one or two guys on the gun for like 5-8 seconds, until they decide to turn around, set it up and pin me in a second. Whatever I do with russian infantry (except for shock troopers) I cant expect a minimum performance at any time. Instead it's either near nothing or crits.

I agree with everything Tycho is saying and like how he puts it.

So far I've won the vast majority of my games. It's not that I am super-good but it just seems most opponents I get are much less experienced at CoH. And in these won games, I'm unable to wrap it up quickly by dealing a killer blow. Even when I dominate and am certain I will win, I still have to kill a couple waves of fresh opponent units because of the weird MP system. When I have units out of the wazoo, I have only enough MP to reinforce a conscript squad per minute while my opponent is getting fresh squads, which isn't even particularly a comeback enabler but rather drags the game out.

The game has a faster pace in terms of getting to vehicles more quickly and having more destroyed stuff. But it also drags. A lot. Vehicle pathing often prevents effective chasing of units, too.

And in these won games, I'm unable to wrap it up quickly by dealing a killer blow. Even when I dominate and am certain I will win, I still have to kill a couple waves of fresh opponent units because of the weird MP system. When I have units out of the wazoo, I have only enough MP to reinforce a conscript squad per minute while my opponent is getting fresh squads, which isn't even particularly a comeback enabler but rather drags the game out.

The game has a faster pace in terms of getting to vehicles more quickly and having more destroyed stuff. But it also drags. A lot. Vehicle pathing often prevents effective chasing of units, too.

Agreed, your opponent may suck but it's still going to take you 20 minutes to finish him off. Annoying as hell.

It's a problem in CoH too. One sided games take too long.

Not that long. A bit longer if your opponent absolutely refuses to quit, but still. If it's truly one sided, you'd just go blow their base up. Besides, if I recall the rate correctly, it'd take less than 8 and a half minutes to win by VPs if you held all 3 - something that was much easier to do in a one-sided game of CoH. That's one of the things that does not happen now because the losing player can still get enough units to keep zerging the victory points. Hence the need to kill wave after wave.

It's a problem in CoH too. One sided games take too long.

If you have a strong opening you could win a game pretty quickly if you didn't make any mistakes and capitalized on all of his...usually when the game lasted too long it was only because of stubborness even when there is literally no chance of making a comeback. But in coh2 the other guy still gets about 5 chances to make a comeback even if you don't make (m)any mistakes.

It's a problem in CoH too. One sided games take too long.

Agreed, which is why making it tens times worse in CoH 2 by making cutoffs less important to manpower income, punishing the better player with crazy upkeep costs, giving the losing player lots of veterancy for taking damage, letting the losing player get some fuel income by OPing the strat point right outside their base, giving them blizzards as opportunities to sneak units around the map and cap, and so on is a pretty bad idea... Company of Heroes is already pretty weak when it comes to letting the winner deliver the killing blow and CoH 2 just makes it much worse in that regard rather than doing a single thing to fix it.

I should also add that I'm not opposed to a comeback mechanic. I don't like games that are too short - one of the advantages of CoH over SC2 is, in my book, that you can't end the game in under 5 minutes against an unprepared opponent. But CoH did things well to give the winner an advantage, mostly in terms of resources. The longer you maintained a dominant position, the bigger your resource advantage became.

Just had a game on Prip were I stole 2 mortars and 2 MGs, had 4-5 more support weapons around the bottom that I couldnt recrew without capping myself, and I just sat there with ten squads holding the bottom while my teammate held the top. Since he had enough paks and MGs to hold the middle VP for most of the games (that place is chokepoint city) he could drag the game out for 40 minutes. He also only had his closest points under control (1-2points+1ammo) but could still crank out new infantry units and tanks. It was ridiculous.

There's no epic MG micro to look for because it switches targets automatically.

hahaha wow wtf is this really true? I havn't really played Osteer as much, but how does it work exactly? Does it literally switch targets to unsuppressed infantry?

I've played Soviets almost exclusively, but the MG seems to be a lot more efficient in suppressing. Damaging a MG in a house is impossible without Molotovs, so flanking is less effective.

I am hopefully wrong on this, but it also seems that Soviet teching is very linear due to the special rifle command being required - conscripts just seem unable to do damage to grens/pgrens after those get some vet or upgrades, requiring other units, which means special rifle command. Unless maybe one can make it with PPsh conscripts, but I am not sure about that.

hahaha wow wtf is this really true? I havn't really played Osteer as much, but how does it work exactly? Does it literally switch targets to unsuppressed infantry?

yes and there is an other fundamental difference , it suppresses by looking , it doesnt even have to fire MVGame

I am hopefully wrong on this, but it also seems that Soviet teching is very linear due to the special rifle command being required - conscripts just seem unable to do damage to grens/pgrens after those get some vet or upgrades, requiring other units, which means special rifle command. Unless maybe one can make it with PPsh conscripts, but I am not sure about that.

you can tech up with wsc or whatever its called as well , yeah well conscrips are a molotov/grenade platform without ppsh and hug the dirt , imo rifles in general do very little damage and soviet mg gets decrwed by grenadier blobs and the population costs for the units is pretty bad right now but hopefully those are things which will be fixed in the future UNLIKE the UI .

PS to the guy who said that the resource placement was there to let you compare the cost values with the banked resources , yeah , i ve been playing the game for a week and i already dont need that feature and everyone i have discussed with also knows the values by now , who was your target audience goldfishes ? MVGame

you can tech up with wsc or whatever its called as well , yeah well conscrips are a molotov/grenade platform without ppsh and hug the dirt , imo rifles in general do very little damage and soviet mg gets decrwed by grenadier blobs and the population costs for the units is pretty bad right now but hopefully those are things which will be fixed in the future UNLIKE the UI .

Yeah I know you can go to support weapons, my point is whether it's viable at all to play with conscripts as your only infantry. Their damage dealing potential seems very low without PPsh, so my impression so far is that guards or shock troops are an absolute must unless you have the doctrine which makes your conscripts better.

Yeah I know you can go to support weapons, my point is whether it's viable at all to play with conscripts as your only infantry. Their damage dealing potential seems very low without PPsh, so my impression so far is that guards or shock troops are an absolute must unless you have the doctrine which makes your conscripts better.

i have been trying to develop a strat with guards coordination motor ( t34/85 doctrine ) with 4 cons , 1or2 mgs 1 mortar 1 field gun and then t3 t34s and t1 for guards to gradually replace conscipts , i ve had moderate success which is not bad on its own but then again when i go for the is2 doctrine i usually stomp my opponents in about 20 mins , that is though because t34/85 120mm mortar and guards are atm either UP or overpriced and soviet mgs take up too much pop for their worth , with the correct balance tweaks it can be a worthwile strat . Atm its really good only against a very heavy t1 play ( like the one inverse has shown in his stratalks )

i have been trying to develop a strat with guards coordination motor ( t34/85 doctrine ) with 4 cons , 1or2 mgs 1 mortar 1 field gun and then t3 t34s and t1 for guards to gradually replace conscipts , i ve had moderate success which is not bad on its own but then again when i go for the is2 doctrine i usually stomp my opponents in about 20 mins , that is though because t34/85 120mm mortar and guards are atm either UP or overpriced and soviet mgs take up too much pop for their worth , with the correct balance tweaks it can be a worthwile strat . Atm its really good only against a very heavy t1 play ( like the one inverse has shown in his stratalks )

This wouldn't work against fast tech to T3 though. Also the flame HT from T2 would absolutely wreak havoc on all your infantry and support weapons.

That's the problem- literally the only thing the game has going for it in the 'epic game' department is long, VP close games involving a lot of tanks. There's no epic MG micro to look for because it switches targets automatically, there's no awesome light vehicle stuff because LV's get owned by ATGs due to the removal of target tables, and so on.

'Long, VP close games' Really? I haven't seen a 1v1 game that goes for more than 45 mins and coh1 60-70 min games were the norm, at least on the high lvl shoutcasts.
And I do like the more accurate weaponry this time around, no more 5% tanks getting away because an RNG rolled a miss/crit on a schreck squad at close range.

It makes the game LESS fluid. Instead of giving effective players a quick win, it lets even bad players come back from behind and drag the game out because their MP income barely takes a hit from being cut off and in fact their MP income beats their opponent because they have less upkeep. The game doesn't flow: it just bumbles on for half an hour until the better player wins anyways but only after dealing with the multiple inevitable comebacks from the worse player. And when players are evenly matched it just evens out the highs and lows and makes big victories and defeats matter less because the other player can always come back. It's not faster paced, it's slower paced - you can't win quickly.

Well like I said to Tommy, I haven't seen a 1v1 game that goes on for more than 45 mins yet. There is still quite imaginative cut-off play i've noticed especially on Kholodny(?) with its sectors on the flanks that cut everything off.
But to the fundamental point, I disagree with you when you say the game bumbles and doesn't flow. Sure the winner can't knock out the loser early and seal the deal (though I did say in my original post that there probably should be some numbers changed and I do concede the reward for bettering your opponent/playing well is currently not sufficient) and because of that there are no situations where a player can 'gloriously' dig themselves out of a hole. But i'd much rather see a close-fought, fast-paced and unpredictable game that goes back and forth without a clear winner for most of the time rather than what we saw most of the time in coh at high levels which was early dominance leading to a predictable win or early dominance then the other guy busts out a can of 'T4 armor and bought vet/vet 3 rifle whupass' to pull an improbable win.

PS: the one point i'll concede about the visibility is that it does go to shit in the mirrors: 'Oh wait, wtf are those conscripts fragging that M3? who's shooting at.. huh?' and so on...